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Aussie gets $1.5 million dollar (AU) fine for copy/uploading NSMBWii

S

Somnid

Member
Slavik81 said:
Striking one in a million pirates with lightning doesn't strike fear into their hearts. Getting caught is like winning a reverse lottery. It's just so unlikely that the odds might as well be zero.

Rather than fining one pirate $1.5 million, it would be orders of magnitude more effective to fine ten thousand pirates $150.
Click to expand...

I'm curious, do people who think Nintendo is just picking on this guy and not going after larger pirate groups really believe that? This guy was caught because he's an idiot and lives in a country that has and enforces copyright laws, quite a number of the rest do not and are a little bit smarter about not giving personal info.
 
O

Open Source

Banned
legend166 said:
It's excessive, but I guarantee it'll get lowered on appeal.
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You don't appeal settlements. Both sides agreed to it.

My guess is that they were like, pay us $5k and shut down all your crap, and we'll forgive the other $1.495 million and put out a scary press release.
 
D

Dragona Akehi

Retired
VOOK said:
The IOS Blows, it's holding back any potential in the Wii Menu.
Click to expand...

But it sure makes it easy to hack the Wii, and impossible for Nintendo thwart homebrew like Sony's been doing with CFW! Considering Nintendo's regressive policies on importing, and worse, localisation, I have to say I'd prefer the current broken, POS IOS than something more sophisticated.
 
S

Scalpel Knight

Member
Upon the game being uploaded to the Internet, Nintendo was able to employ the use of sophisticated technological forensics to identify the individual responsible for illegally copying the file and making it available for further distribution.
Click to expand...
Friend codes?
 
V

VOOK

We don't know why he keeps buying PAL, either.
Dragona Akehi said:
But it sure makes it easy to hack the Wii, and impossible for Nintendo thwart homebrew like Sony's been doing with CFW! Considering Nintendo's regressive policies on importing, and worse, localisation, I have to say I'd prefer the current broken, POS IOS than something more sophisticated.
Click to expand...

Good point, I like me some homebrew and importing.
 
D

Dragona Akehi

Retired
viciouskillersquirrel said:
Speaking of which, have Team Twiizers made any headway into cracking the DSi firmware? I am NOT about to stop importing handheld games once DSi-only titles come out.
Click to expand...

They've had their own code running in DSi mode for a few months now, but they're still a ways away from releasing a DSi HomeBrew Channel or the like. So slow, but they have made progress.
 
V

VOOK

We don't know why he keeps buying PAL, either.
"Nintendo Australia is always pushing for games to be released here at the same time as the rest of the world, so we were pleased to get New Super Mario Bros. Wii before anyone else," the spokesperson said. "Unfortunately, due to to the actions of this individual, future release dates may be affected for Australia, which is disappointing for us."
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http://au.gamespot.com/news/6249964.html

For fucks sake.
 
T

trinest

Member
I like how they blame priacy for there own downfall, a decade ago things where rough then NAL sorted their shit out and in 2005 was pretty dam EPIC! now its like they retreated back to shits ville again.
 
S

Slavik81

Member
Somnid said:
I'm curious, do people who think Nintendo is just picking on this guy and not going after larger pirate groups really believe that?
Click to expand...
Yes. The cost of bringing an issue like this to court is similar regardless of whether they get $150 or $1.5 million out of them. It would be prohibitively expensive to bring a large number of people to court and sue them, even if they did find them.

This single court case probably costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions. To have 10,000 of those for each game they release would be too expensive, even for Nintendo.

Copyright reform would be needed before effective enforcement could be instituted.
 
S

Somnid

Member
Slavik81 said:
Yes. The cost of bringing an issue like this to court is similar regardless of whether they get $150 or $1.5 million out of them. It would be prohibitively expensive to bring a large number of people to court and sue them, even if they did find them.

This single court case probably costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions. To have 10,000 of those for each game they release would be too expensive, even for Nintendo.

Copyright reform would be needed before effective enforcement could be instituted.
Click to expand...

The whole premise of the argument is that they should prosecute the worst of the worst and probably those with lots of money which this guy doesn't fall under. This means that by selective targeting he should be off the list. How many people Nintendo can take to court isn't the issue and if it was they won't bother with this guy. The reason he's here is because they have a solid case against him and he's in a country who has and enforces IP law. The worst pirates don't directly operate in these countries and may not be identifiable.
 
D

Drkirby

Corporate Apologist
yankeeforever2 said:
:lol
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A guy using a computer is sophisticated technological forensics! Just give him some tea to be sure, and you got some sophistication, some technology, and he is sort of doing forensics.
 
V

VOOK

We don't know why he keeps buying PAL, either.
Mainstream media is picking this up

367235-fine-for-illegal-download.jpg


Wrong game :lol
 
S

Slavik81

Member
Somnid said:
The whole premise of the argument is that they should prosecute the worst of the worst and probably those with lots of money which this guy doesn't fall under. This means that by selective targeting he should be off the list. How many people Nintendo can take to court isn't the issue and if it was they won't bother with this guy. The reason he's here is because they have a solid case against him and he's in a country who has and enforces IP law. The worst pirates don't directly operate in these countries and may not be identifiable.
Click to expand...
I don't agree with your opening argument. Because they have limited resources, they want to make it clear that anyone can be held responsible for pirating. If they were to exclusively target the worst of the worst, they'd fail miserably at dissuading the average pirate. (Or at least, fail even harder than they already do).

I do agree that this guy was probably chosen because the case against him was easy, but I really don't think that they're lacking targets. It's not that hard to track down the average pirate if you can get a subpoena.
 
V

VOOK

We don't know why he keeps buying PAL, either.
So now I'm getting hate mail (probably from pirates) because I called the guy a moron.
 
T

TheExodu5

Banned
benita said:
Uh why the hell not?
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Because the organizations going after the downloaders are doing so unjustly. Take the woman who was charged $80,000 per sons. They ruin someone's life to make an example. If that person were to say, shoplift those songs from a store, the penalty would be laughable in comparison.

You can apply the same deal to anti-drug organizations. You go after the source of distribution, not the users. You don't give someone 10 years in jail for smoking a joint.
 
S

Slavik81

Member
VOOK said:
So now I'm getting hate mail (probably from pirates) because I called the guy a moron.
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That's silly. Even pirates should openly admit that the guy did something pretty dumb. Even if they think he was totally in the right, the guy knew what he was doing was illegal and did a poor job of hiding it, despite that he didn't want to be caught.
 
V

VOOK

We don't know why he keeps buying PAL, either.
Slavik81 said:
That's silly. Even pirates should openly admit that the guy did something pretty dumb. Even if they think he was totally in the right, the guy knew what he was doing was illegal and did a poor job of hiding it, despite that he didn't want to be caught.
Click to expand...

Apparently I'm "he morons who worship these huge multi national arse-holes like Nintendo.".
 
D

Dogenzaka

Banned
Hooray for ruining a man's life and ripping him of every cent he ever could make in the name of bankruptcy and Mario.

These punishments are impractical and it's obvious they couldn't apply this to downloading pirates (unless the government wants to put half of Australia in jail/bankrupt).

Equally hilarious that Nintendo considers $1.5 million lost-sales-revenue when they can't even prove that a fraction of these people would buy the game had they not pirated it. If someone doesn't have $100 AUD, they simply don't have $100 AUD.
 
V

VOOK

We don't know why he keeps buying PAL, either.
Dragona Akehi said:
That certainly seems to be their attempt with territories outside of Japan...
Click to expand...

Going by the Famitsu index I'd say it was the other way around...
 
B

BowieZ

Banned
Considering I live in the same city this dude does, and even worked at the Mt Ommaney shopping centre before, I just want to go on record saying that I purchased New Super Mario Bros. Wii for US$86 and it was one of the greatest purchases I've ever made!

I <3 Nintendo!
 
R

Rich!

Member
I remember when that guy uploaded the game for all the GBAtemp members too.

I was there thinking 'jesus christ, its out next week, can't you guys wait?'. Seemingly not.

Anyway, they're missing out on the shiny red box. Motherfuckers!
 
G

GaimeGuy

Volunteer Deputy Campaign Director, Obama for America '16
:lol Count.


I'm kind of bouncing around some GBATemp threads about this right now and it is fucking hilarious.

People are going "Noooo Kongz I can't believe Nintendo fined you for leaking their game. That totally sucks :( " :lol

Um, yeah, you rip and leak a high-profile game to tens of thousands of individuals over the internet a week before the game officially is supposed to come out. You are the direct source of the game rip's distribution. Your ass is getting fined.

So the store breaks street date and sells a few copies. Big deal. You still chose to put it on the internet.
 
J

jorma

is now taking requests
Goverments fucking over their own citizens on behalf of global corporations? Shocking.

The fine is atrocious. Atrocious.
 
goldenpp72

goldenpp72

Member
im all for this, people get put in jail and forced to pay shit for damages in real life, why is a cyber crime any different? I don't download shit I don't own and I don't upload files to help piracy, doing so is stealing money from the company which WILL rain down on the employee which causes them to lose jobs and takes their life away, basically.

My job has me working in a field that generates electricity, if people all stole electricity i'd not have any money to live on, and I think this philosophy should be applied to any crime you think about committing, if you're so willing to do something inhumane, then be ready to take it back.

Now of course, I realize this one person isn't going to cause nintendo to fire people, but with him and many people doing it, over time, it could lead to problems.
 
N

nyong

Banned
The fine is perfectly 'ok' as long as the guy actually handed out $1.5 mil in stolen software - so long as Nintendo's hypothetical damages were $1.5 mil. If someone were to shoplift $1.5 mil worth of clothing over time and get caught, they're going to pay for all of it (and give up the profits), regardless of whether the clothing would have arguably otherwise sold or not.

Either piracy is theft or it's not. If it's theft, it should be treated the same as any other theft.
 
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